Bowing Out

This year, we've decided we're bowing out of the madness.  We've talked about it for years, but are finally choosing to try simplicity.  I read this idea last year, or maybe the year before, and fell in love with the heart behind  it. . .so this is the tradition we are going to attempt to implement.  I am just so tired of feeling frazzled and crazy and bloated and lethargic from over-stuffing my life with too much stuff and running around with too much to do as if the world were going to fall apart if I slow down long enough to breathe.  Self - the heart of all of it and always the idol usurping the throne from the only King worthy of my adoration, my worship, my life.

Again, I read this somewhere (wish I could remember where and give the credit) so don't think was creative enough to come up with this on my own!  I am terrible at creativity. . .but fabulous at copying other people's great ideas!  :)  Three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh

If Christ Himself was worthy of three gifts, surely we don't need more than that?   I also like the idea of meditating on the purposes of the gifts.  Gold is obvious, but the other two seem strange and foreign to me.  I have older kids, so finding relevant, non-cheesey ways to reflect on these might be a little more challenging, but even for myself, worth it!

Myrrh was incredibly valuable in Jesus' day.  It was used as an annointing/embalming oil for the dead, it had many medicinal uses and was used in expensive perfumes.  In relationship to gifts, it was used for the body.  So our myrrh gift will be anything useful to the body - clothes, perfume, etc.

Frankincense was burned in Jewish worship rituals and symbolized prayers rising to heaven.

"Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne.  The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand."  Revelation 8:3,4

"Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. 8And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."  Revelation 5:6-8

Love these verses and the picture of our prayers rising to the throne like incense.  Our Frankincense gift will be anything that can encourage, build up, bless the kids spiritually.  I am excited about looking for ways to be creative with this!

Lastly, the Gold gift.  Gold was simply extravagant.   A gift for a King.  This is the chance to be generous.  One gift that will just bless.  Something precious, wanted, dear.

SO that's it, 3 gifts.  Our effort to simplify.  To get rid of the pressure to have 8,000 gifts under the tree and simply enjoy the celebration of the only One truly worthy of our worship.     What are you doing this year to magnify Christ?  Would love to hear your ideas!!!

Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!

It seems like as soon as we made public our intent to become foster parents, everyone we talk to had a story.    A story about how someone they know fostered a 4 year old child who tried to murder them in their sleep.  Or how they took in a struggling teen who stole their debit card and cleaned out their bank account.  Or how their case worker yanked them around and the system failed and they would never put themselves through that again.   And if they don’t have a story, they certainly have an admonition for us to protect our family and lock up our valuables, their tone often shaded with perplexity and sometimes even disapproval.

I really do understand where those well meaning and concerned are coming from.  I really do understand that most hearts intend only to caution and speak wisdom and balance.  The thing is, when did our goal become easy?  When did our Lord call us to comfortable or safe?  When did picking up our cross and laying down our life become a sterilized metaphor for avoiding rated R movies and being nice to the person who sits next to us at church? 

      "This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down His life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth."  I John 3:16-18

Lay down our lives. . .love. . .with actions and in truth.  Working this out, what this looks like for each of us is different.  But Scripture is absolutely, unwaveringly clear.  It. Will. Not. Always. Be. Easy.  Or comfortable.  Or safe.  It will cost us everything - our lives.  But here is the glorious mystery.  "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."

We know as we begin this journey toward fostering and adoption, that there are no promises.  We have no romanticized expectations.  We are not demanding a happily ever after before the story is even begun.  We understand that it will be hard and overwhelming and frustrating.  We have no doubt that we will struggle and flounder and fail more often than we succeed.  We get that loving and committing to kids who have been through more than most of us could even fathom is going to require farm more heart and compassion and wisdom than we possess.

But we also know this:  His grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in weakness (I Corinthians 2:19).  We know that though our flesh and our heart may fail, God alone is our strength and portion forever (Psalm 73:26) and He will work every moment of our lives together for His good purposes (Romans 8:28).  We know that the compassion and and love and wisdom we need will come not from our own broken and insufficient hearts but from the Father of lights from whom all good and perfect gifts come, and who gives wisdom generously to anyone who asks and without finding fault (James 1:5, 17)

We know that in the faces of broken children we will see Christ Himself.  We trust that in loving them, we are loving Him.  We desperately hope that seeds will be planted and that the only One who is capable of making good things grow will produce beautiful fruit for His glory.  We believe that in laying down our lives, we will find Life.

Some days I am so incredibly filled with expectation and anticipation and joy for the journey.  Some days I take nothing captive and I turn the words of caution and warning over and over in my head. The ones about the failures and the scary and the hard and I exchange all of that peace and joy for anxiety and doubt.  But I am praying.  I so desperately desire to ask believing, without doubt, not double minded or unstable, blown and tossed by the wind but with a steadfast mind, kept in perfect peace because I trust in the One who alone is worthy of my trust.  And when I falter - Lord I do believe!  Help my unbelief!  And oh friend, He is faithful!

Lord, you are going to have to show me!

“Lord you are going to have to show me!”  222 pages of children waiting for a family on the “Adopt US” webpage:  children in the United States who have no family.  Children who live in a world where no one wants them.  Children who have next to no chance at a stable, permanent home where they can rest in the security and unconditional love of a family of their own.  That many orphans in this country, under our ‘roof’, within easy reach of the church.  And there are hundreds of thousands more  languishing in foster care.   Many of these children will bounce from home to home, never knowing the security and love that their devastated hearts long for. 

In the U.S. 423,000 children are living without permanent families 
in the foster care system.  115,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 40% of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted.

Over 65,000 children in foster care in the U.S. are placed in institutions

or group homes, not in traditional foster homes.

Neglect was reported for 54% of all children entering foster care

by their parent or primary caregiver.  Parental substance abuse was a circumstance present for 28% of the children entering care.      

States spent a mere 1.2-1.3% of available federal funds

on parent recruitment and training services even though 22% of children in foster care had adoption as their goal.

“²⁷ Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Lord, you are going to have to show me.  As I scroll through page after page of listings of orphans in this country, I am swallowed up by the need.   I do not know how to choose a child from this sea of children.  Biography after biography with pictures of sweet little faces and big, brave smiles.  Kids without a family who will take them and love them and call them their own.  If I am entirely honest, I am terrified of choosing any child.  I am terrified of what it might mean for our family and the way it might turn our easy, well- managed, neat and convenient into hard, chaotic, messy and uncomfortable.    But I know.  I know this is what He has called us to.  We have all felt it. . .every one of us, separately and together.  For nearly ten years I have argued with Him, reasoned with Him, alternately ignored and wrestled with Him.  No more.  It is time for obedience. 

 5A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,

is God in his holy dwelling.

6God sets the lonely in families,^b

Psalm 68: 5-6

Dying to Live

I have been a Christian for almost 15 years.  It has been an amazing, challenging, mountain high, valley low, roller coaster journey and I would not trade one second.  But this last month, God has been wrecking me and my family.  I mean really.  Destroying us.  And I have never felt so free or full of joy!

Today.  I am determined. . .and delighted. . .to lay down my life, every bit of me - my time, my money, my pride and plans, my religious deeds, my everything - for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I have spent the last 15 years seeking Him - but I am realizing that I have spent very little time seeking the true, terrifying, impossibly huge, unreachable because of His holiness, demands a blank check of my life, completely other and foreign to me, God as He has revealed Himself in His word.  The God I have been seeking looks a lot more like me:  quick to anger, slow to forgive, annoyed and frustrated, passive.  The one I've been looking for desires my own comfort over His will.

I cling to my own life, my own comfort and will and dreams and desires.  I grasp with all the white knuckled intensity I can muster to remain in control.  I seek to give only as much of myself as is necessary to feel good.  To get my God fix.  To squash down the ever present, nagging feeling that something is not quite right.  Just enough to sand the edges off of the quiet assertion in my heart that I am missing it.  Missing the fullness of joy and life He has promised - the peace that passes all understanding.  It all remains mostly elusive to me.  There are moments.  Moments of joy and perfect peace when I am abandoned to His will in me.  But why do I settle for moments?!

Today, today, I am dying to live!  I want to pour out every bit of me - with reckless abandon - so that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me! I want to stop trying to figure out how much of myself I can keep, how much I can hold onto while still getting a taste of God.  I want to be wrecked for the sake of the Gospel!  No more compromise.  No more justifying.  No more lukewarm, double minded, give and take.  God is not a deal maker.  He doesn't bargain with us for which parts of our life we get to keep and which we will surrender.  He. Demands. Everything.  And I want Him to have it!  All of it.  And I have never been so excited about the journey or so filled with anticipation about what this next day may hold, this next hour, this next minute.  All of me, every bit, for the sake of knowing You!

Philippians 3:8
8 What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.